UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 


By  lord  DUNSANY 

FIVE  PLAYS :  The  Gods  op  the  Mountains  ; 
The  Golden  Doom  ;  King  Argimenes  and 
THE  Unknown  Warrior  ;  The  Guttering 
Gate  ;  The  Lost  Silk  Hat 

FIFTY-ONE  TALES 

TALES  OF  WAR 

UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 


UNHAPPY 
FAR-OFF  THINGS 


BY 
LORD  DUNSANY 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,  BROWN,  AND  COMPANY 

1919 


-^^ 


Copyright^  1919^ 
By  Little,  Brown,  and  Company. 


All  rights  reserved 
Published,  November,  1919 


Norinoob  H^xta 
Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Gushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


•  »  •  "t 


H  H)trge  of  Victors 

Lift  not  thy  trumpet,  Victory,  to  the  sky 
Nor  through  battahons  nor  by  batteries  blow^ 
But  over  hollows  full  of  old  wire  go, 

Where  among  dregs  of  war  the  long-dead  lie 

With  wasted  iron  that  the  guns  passed  by 
When  they  went  eastwards  like  a  tide  at  flow. 
There  blow  thy  trumpet  that  the  dead  may 
know. 

Who  waited  for  thy  coming.  Victory. 

It  is  not  we  that  have  deserved  thy  wreath. 

They  waited  there  among  the  towering  weeds  : 

The  deep  mud   burned  under  the  thermite's 

breath. 

And  winter  cracked  the  bones  that  no  man 

heeds : 

Hundreds  of  nights  flamed  by :    the  seasons 

passed. 
And  thou  hast  come  to  them  at  last,  at  last ! 


^  ^(\  Ts  K  '^'^ 


FOREWORD 

I  HAVE  chosen  a  title  that  shall  show 
that  I  make  no  claim  for  this  book  to  be 
"up-to-date."  As  the  first  tale  indicates 
I  hoped  to  show,  to  as  many  as  might  care 
to  read  my  words,  something  of  the  extent 
of  the  wrongs  that  the  people  of  France 
had  suffered.  There  is  no  such  need  any 
longer.  The  tales,  so  far  as  they  went,  I 
gather  together  here  for  those  that  read 
my  books. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAOB 

A  Dirge  of  Victory v 

I  The  Cathedral  of  Arras    ....      1 

n    A  Good  War 11 

in  The  House  with  Two  Stories    .        .        .21 

IV  Bermondsey  versus  Wurtemburg       .        .    31 

V  On  AN  Old  Battle  Field     .        .        .        .39 

VI    The  Real  Thing 49 

Vn    A  Garden  of  Arras 57 

Vrn    After  Hell 67 

IX  A  Happy  Valley   .        .        .        .        .        .73 

X    In  Bethune 79 

XI  In  AN  Old  Dra wing-Room  .        .        .        .89 

Xn    The  Homes  of  Arras 97 


THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  ARRAS 


THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  ARRAS 

ON  the  great  steps  of  Arras  Cathedral 
I  saw  a  procession,  in  silence,  stand- 
ing still. 

They  were  in  orderly  and  perfect  lines, 
stirring  or  swaying  slightly.  Sometimes 
they  bent  their  heads,  sometimes  two  leaned 
together,  but  for  the  most  part  they  were 
motionless.  It  was  the  time  when  the 
fashion  was  just  changing  and  some  were 
newly  all  in  shining  yellow,  while  others 
still  wore  green. 

I  went  up  the  steps  amongst  them,  the 
only  human  thing,  for  men  and  women 
worship  no  more  in  Arras  Cathedral,  and 
the  trees  have  come  instead ;  little  humble 
things  all  less  than  four  years  old,  in  great 
numbers  thronging  the  steps  processionally, 
and   growing  in  perfect  rows   just   where 


'4 'Unhappy  far-off  things 

step  meets  step.  They  have  come  to  Arras 
with  the  wind  and  the  rain ;  which  enter  the 
aisles  together  whenever  they  will,  and  go 
wherever  man  went;  they  have  such  a 
reverent  air,  the  young  limes  on  the  three 
flights  of  steps,  that  you  would  say  they 
did  not  know  that  Arras  Cathedral  was 
fallen  on  evil  days,  that  they  did  not  know 
they  looked  on  ruin  and  vast  disaster,  but 
thought  that  these  great  walls  open  to  stars 
and  sun  were  the  natural  and  fitting  place 
for  the  worship  of  little  weeds. 

Behind  them  the  shattered  houses  of 
Arras  seemed  to  cluster  about  the  cathedral 
as,  one  might  fancy  easily,  hurt  and  fright- 
ened children,  so  wistful  are  their  gaping 
windows  and  old,  gray,  empty  gables,  so 
melancholy  and  puzzled.  They  are  more 
like  a  little  old  people  come  upon  trouble, 
gazing  at  their  great  elder  companion  and 
not  knowing  what  to  do. 

But  the  facts  of  Arras  are  sadder  than  a 
poet's  most  tragic  fancies.  In  the  western 
front  of  Arras  Cathedral  stand  eight  pillars 


THE   CATHEDRAL  OF  ARRAS    5 

rising  from  the  ground ;  above  them  stood 
four  more.  Of  the  four  upper  pillars  the 
two  on  the  left  are  gone,  swept  away  by 
shells  from  the  North :  and  a  shell  has 
passed  through  the  neck  of  one  of  the  two 
that  is  left  just  as  a  bullet  might  go  through 
a  daffodil's  stem. 

The  left-hand  corner  of  that  western  wall 
has  been  caught  from  the  North,  by  some 
tremendous  shell  which  has  torn  the  whole 
corner  down  in  a  mound  of  stone:  and 
still  the  walls  have  stood. 

I  went  in  through  the  western  doorway. 
All  along  the  nave  lay  a  long  heap  of  white 
stones,  with  grass  and  weeds  on  the  top, 
and  a  Uttle  trodden  path  over  the  grass 
and  weeds.  This  is  all  that  remained  of 
the  roof  of  Arras  Cathedral  and  of  any 
chairs  or  pews  there  may  have  been  in  the 
nave,  or  anything  that  may  have  hung 
above  them.  It  was  all  down  but  one 
slender  arch  that  crossed  the  nave  just  at 
the  transept ;  it  stood  out  against  the  sky, 
and  all  who  saw  it  wondered  how  it  stood. 


6      UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

In  the  southern  aisle  panes  of  green  glass, 
in  twisted  frames  of  lead,  here  and  there 
lingered,  like  lonely  leaves  on  an  apple- 
tree  after  a  hailstorm  in  spring.  The 
aisles  still  had  their  roofs  over  them  which 
those  stout  old  walls  held  up  in  spite  of  all. 

Where  the  nave  joins  the  transept  the 
ruin  is  most  enormous.  Perhaps  there  was 
more  to  bring  down  there,  so  the  Germans 
brought  it  down :  there  may  have  been  a 
tower  there,  for  all  I  know,  or  a  spire. 

I  stood  on  the  heap  and  looked  towards 
the  altar.  To  my  left  all  was  ruin.  To 
my  right  two  old  saints  in  stone  stood  by 
the  southern  door.  The  door  had  been 
forced  open  long  ago,  and  stood  as  it  was 
opened,  partly  broken.  A  great  round  hole 
gaped  in  the  ground  outside;  it  was  this 
that  had  opened  the  door. 

Just  beyond  the  big  heap,  on  the  left  of 
the  chancel,  stood  something  made  of  wood, 
which  almost  certainly  had  been  the  organ. 

As  I  looked  at  these  things  there  passed 
through  the  desolate  sanctuaries,  and  down 


THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  ARRAS     7 

an  aisle  past  pillars  pitted  with  shrapnel, 
a  sad  old  woman,  sad  even  for  a  woman  of 
Northeast  France.  She  seemed  to  be 
looking  after  the  mounds  and  stones  that 
had  once  been  the  Cathedral ;  perhaps  she 
had  once  been  the  Bishop's  servant,  or  the 
wife  of  one  of  the  vergers;  she  only  re- 
mained of  all  who  had  been  there  in  other 
days,  she  and  the  pigeons  and  jackdaws. 
I  spoke  to  her.  All  Arras,  she  said,  was 
ruined.  The  great  Cathedral  was  ruined; 
her  own  family  were  ruined  utterly,  and 
she  pointed  to  where  the  sad  houses  gazed 
from  forlorn  dead  windows.  Absolute  ruin, 
she  said;  but  there  must  be  no  armistice. 
No  armistice.  No.  It  was  necessary  that 
there  should  be  no  armistice  at  all.  No 
armistice  with  Germans. 

She  passed  on,  resolute  and  sad,  and  the 
guns  boomed  on  beyond  Arras. 

A  French  interpreter,  with  the  Sphinxes' 
heads  on  his  collar,  showed  me  a  picture 
postcard  with  a  photograph  of  the  chancel 
as  it  was  five  years  ago.    It  was  the  very 


8      UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

chancel  before  which  I  was  standing.  To 
see  that  photograph  astonished  me,  and  to 
know  that  the  camera  that  took  it  must 
have  stood  where  I  was  standing,  only  a 
little  lower  down,  under  the  great  heap. 

Though  one  knew  there  had  been  an 
altar  there,  and  candles  and  roof  and  carpet, 
and  all  the  solemnity  of  a  cathedral's  in- 
terior, yet  to  see  that  photograph  and  to 
stand  on  that  weedy  heap,  in  the  wind, 
under  the  jackdaws,  was  a  contrast  with 
which  the  mind  fumbled. 

I  walked  a  little  with  the  French  inter- 
preter. We  came  to  a  little  shrine  in  the 
southern  aisle.  It  had  been  all  paved 
with  marble,  and  the  marble  was  broken 
into  hundreds  of  pieces,  and  some  one  had 
carefully  picked  up  all  the  bits,  and  laid 
them  together  on  the  altar. 

And  this  pathetic  heap  that  was  gathered 
of  broken  bits  had  drawn  many  to  stop  and 
gaze  at  it;  and  idly,  as  soldiers  will,  they 
had  written  their  names  on  them :  every 
bit  had  a  name  on  it.     With  but  a  touch  of 


THE  CATHEDRAL  OF  ARRAS     9 

irony  the  Frenchman  said  "All  that  is 
necessary  to  bring  your  name  to  posterity 
is  to  write  it  on  one  of  these  stones."  *'  No," 
I  said,  "I  will  do  it  by  describing  all  this." 
And  we  both  laughed. 

I  have  not  done  it  yet :  there  is  more  to 
say  of  Arras.  As  I  begin  the  tale  of  ruin 
and  wrong,  the  man  who  did  it  totters. 
His  gaudy  power  begins  to  stream  away 
like  the  leaves  of  autumn.  Soon  his  throne 
will  be  bare,  and  I  shall  have  but  begun  to 
say  what  I  have  to  say  of  calamity  in 
cathedral  and  little  gardens  of  Arras. 

The  winter  of  the  HohenzoUerns  will 
come ;  sceptre,  uniforms,  stars  and  courtiers 
all  gone ;  still  the  world  will  not  know  half 
of  the  bitter  wrongs  of  Arras.  And  spring 
will  bring  a  new  time  and  cover  the  trenches 
with  green,  and  the  pigeons  will  preen 
themselves  on  the  shattered  towers,  and 
the  lime  trees  along  the  steps  will  grow 
taller  and  brighter,  and  happier  men  will 
sing  in  the  streets  untroubled  by  any 'War 
Lord ;  by  then  perhaps  I  may  have  told,  to 


10    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

such  as  care  to  read,  what  such  a  war  did 
in  an  ancient  town,  already  romantic  when 
romance  was  young,  when  war  came  sud- 
denly without  mercy,  without  pity,  out  of 
the  North  and  East,  on  little  houses,  carved 
galleries  and  gardens ;  churches,  cathedrals 
and  the  jackdaw  nests. 


A  GOOD  WAR 


n 

A  GOOD  WAR 

NIETZSCHE  said:  "You  have  heard 
that  a  good  cause  justifies  any  war, 
but  I  say  unto  you  that  a  good  war  justifies 
any  cause." 

A  man  was  walking  alone  over  a  plain  so 
desolate  that,  if  you  have  never  seen  it,  the 
mere  word  desolation  could  never  convey 
to  you  the  melancholy  surroundings  that 
mourned  about  this  man  on  his  lonely  walk. 
Far  ofif  a  vista  of  trees  followed  a  cheerless 
road  all  dead  as  mourners  suddenly  stricken 
dead  in  some  funeral  procession.  By  this 
road  he  had  come ;  but  when  he  had  reached 
a  certain  point  he  turned  from  the  road  at 
once,  branching  away  to  the  left,  led  by  a 
line  of  bushes  that  may  once  have  been 
a  lane.     For  some  while  his  feet  had  rustled 


14     UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

through  long-neglected  grass ;  sometimes 
he  lifted  them  up  to  step  over  a  telephone 
wire  that  lolled  over  old  entanglements  and 
bushes ;  often  he  came  to  rusty  strands  of 
barbed  wire  and  walked  through  them  where 
they  had  been  cut,  perhaps  years  ago,  by 
huge  shells ;  then  his  feet  hissed  on  through 
the  grass  again,  dead  grass  that  had  hissed 
about  his  boots  all  through  the  afternoon. 

Once  he  sat  down  to  rest  on  the  edge  of  a 
crater,  weary  with  such  walking  as  he  had 
never  seen  before ;  and  after  he  had  stayed 
there  a  little  while  a  cat  that  seemed  to  have 
its  home  in  that  wild  place  started  suddenly 
up  and  leaped  away  over  the  weeds.  It 
seemed  an  animal  totally  wild,  and  utterly 
afraid  of  man.  * 

Grey  bare  hills  surrounded  the  waste :  a 
partridge  called  far  off :  evening  was  draw- 
ing in.  He  rose  wearily,  and  yet  with  a 
certain  fervour,  as  one  that  pursues  with 
devotion  a  lamentable  quest.  Looking 
round  him  as  he  left  his  resting  place  he 
saw  a  cabbage  or  two  that  after  some  while 


A  GOOD  WAR  15 

had  come  back  to  what  was  a  field  and  had 
sprouted  on  the  edge  of  a  shell-hole.  A 
yellowing  convolvulus  climbed  up  a  dead 
weed.  Weeds,  grass  and  tumbled  earth 
were  all  about  him.  It  would  be  no  better 
when  he  went  on.  Still  he  went  on.  A 
flower  or  two  peeped  up  among  the  weeds. 
He  stood  up  and  looked  at  the  landscape 
and  drew  no  hope  from  that ;  the  shattered 
trunk  of  a  stricken  tree  leered  near  him, 
white  trenches  scarred  the  hill  side. 

He  followed  an  old  trench  through  a 
hedge  of  elder,  passed  under  more  wire,  by 
a  great  rusty  shell  that  had  not  burst, 
passed  by  a  dug-out  where  something  grey 
seemed  to  lie  down  at  the  bottom  of  many 
steps.  Black  fungi  grew  near  the  entrance. 
He  went  on  and  on  over  shell-holes,  passing 
round  them  where  they  were  deep,  stepping 
into  or  over  the  small  ones.  Little  burrs 
clutched  at  him ;  he  went  rustling  on,  the 
only  sound  in  the  waste  but  the  clicking  of 
shattered  iron.  Now  he  was  among  nettles. 
He  came  by  many  small  unnatural  valleys. 


16    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

He  passed  more  trenches  only  guarded  by 
fungi. 

While  it  was  light  he  followed  little  paths, 
marvelling  who  made  them.  Once  he  got 
into  a  trench.  Dandelions  leaned  across 
it  as  though  to  bar  his  way,  believing  man 
to  have  gone  and  to  have  no  right  to  re- 
turn. Weeds  thronged  in  thousands  here. 
It  was  the  day  of  the  weeds.  It  was  only 
they  that  seemed  to  triumph  in  those  fields 
deserted  of  man.  He  passed  on  down  the 
trench,  and  never  knew  whose  trench  it 
once  had  been.  Frightful  shells  had 
^,(1/  smashed  it  here  and  there,  and  had  twisted 
iron  as  though  round  gigantic  fingers,  that 
had  twiddled  it  idly  a  moment  and  let  it 
drop  to  lie  in  the  rain  for  ever. 

He  passed  more  dug-outs  and  black  fungi 
watching  them,  and  then  he  left  the  trench, 
going  straight  on  over  the  open :  again  dead 
grasses  hissed  about  his  feet,  sometimes 
small  wire  sang  faintly.  He  passed  through 
a  belt  of  nettles  and  thence  to  dead  grass 
again.     And  now  the  light  of  the  afternoon 


A  GOOD  WAR  17 

was  beginning  to  dwindle  away.  He  had 
intended  to  reach  his  journey's  end  by 
daylight,  for  he  was  past  the  time  of  life 
when  one  wanders  after  dark,  but  he  had 
not  contemplated  the  diflSculty  of  walking 
over  that  road  or  dreamed  that  lanes  he 
knew  should  be  so  foundered  and  merged 
in  that  mournful  desolate  moor. 

Evening  was  falling  fast,  still  he  kept  on. 
It  was  the  time  when  the  cornstacks  would 
once  have  begun  to  grow  indistinct  and 
slowly  turn  grey  in  the  greyness,  and 
homesteads  one  by  one  would  have  lit 
their  innumerable  lights.  But  evening  now 
came  down  on  a  dreary  desolation:  and 
a  cold  wind  arose ;  and  the  traveller  heard 
the  mournful  sound  of  iron  flapping  on 
broken  things,  and  knew  that  this  was  the 
sound  that  would  haunt  the  waste  for  ever. 

And  evening  settled  down,  a  huge  grey 
canvas  waiting  for  sombre  pictures,  a 
setting  for  all  the  dark  tales  of  the  world, 
haunted  if  ever  a  grizzly  place  was  haunted 
ever  in  any  century,  in  any  land ;  but  not 


18    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

by  mere  ghosts  from  all  those  thousands 
of  graves  and  half -buried  bodies  and  sepul- 
chral shell-holes ;  haunted  by  things  huger 
and  more  disastrous  than  that;  haunted 
by  wailing  ambitions,  under  the  stars  or 
moon,  drifting  across  the  rubbish  that  once 
was  villages,  which  strews  the  lonely  plain ; 
the  lost  ambitions  of  two  Emperors  and  a 
Sultan,  wailing  from  wind  to  wind,  and 
whimpering  for  dominion  of  the  world. 

The  cold  wind  blew  over  the  blasted 
heath  and  bits  of  broken  iron  flapped  on 
and  on. 

And  now  the  traveller  hurried,  for  night 
was  falling,  and  such  a  night  as  three  witches 
might  have  brewed  in  a  cauldron.  He 
went  on  eagerly  but  with  infinite  sadness. 
Over  the  sky  line  strange  rockets  went  up 
from  the  war,  peered  oddly  over  the  earth 
and  went  down  again.  Very  far  off  a  few 
soldiers  lit  a  little  fire  of  their  own.  The 
night  grew  colder;  tap,  tap  went  broken 
iron. 

And  at  last  the  traveller  stopped  in  the 


A  GOOD  WAR  19 

lonely  night,  and  looked  round  him  atten- 
tively, and  appeared  to  be  satisfied  that  he 
had  come  within  sight  of  his  journey's  end, 
although  to  ordinary  eyes  the  spot  to  which 
he  had  come  differed  in  no  way  froin  the 
rest  of  the  waste. 

He  went  no  further  but  turned  round 
and  round,  peering  piece  by  piece  at  that 
weedy  and  cratered  earth. 

He  was  looking  for  the  village  where  he 
was  bom. 


THE  HOUSE  WITH  TWO  STORIES 


m 

THE  HOUSE  WITH  TWO  STORIES 

1CAME  again  to  Croisilles. 
I  looked  for  the  sunken  road  that  we 
used  to  hold  in  support,  with  its  row  of 
little  shelters  in  the  bank  and  the  carved 
oak  saints  above  them  here  and  there 
that  had  survived  the  church  in  Croisilles. 
I  could  have  found  it  with  my  eyes  shut. 
With  my  eyes  open  I  could  not  find  it.  I 
did  not  recognise  the  lonely  metalled  road 
down  which  lorries  were  rushing  for  the 
little  lane  so  full  of  life,  whose  wheel-ruts 
were  three  years  old. 

As  I  gazed  about  me  looking  for  our  line 
I  passed  an  old  French  civilian  looking  down 
at  a  slight  mound  of  white  stone  that  rose 
a   little   higher   than   the   road.     He   was 


24     UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

walking  about  uncertainly,  when  first  I 
noticed  him,  as  though  he  was  not  sure 
where  he  was.  But  now  he  stood  quite 
still,  looking  down  at  the  mound. 

"  Voila  ma  maisouy''  he  said. 

He  said  no  more  than  that:  this  as- 
tounding remark,  this  gesture  that  indicated 
such  calamity,  were  quite  simply  made. 
There  was  nothing  whatever  of  theatrical 
pose  that  we  wrongly  associate  with  the 
French  because  they  conceal  their  emotions 
less  secretly  than  we ;  there  were  no  tragic 
tones  in  his  voice:  only  a  trace  of  deep 
afiFection  showed  in  one  of  the  words  he 
used.  He  spoke  as  a  woman  might  say 
of  her  only  child,  "Look  at  my  baby." 

*'  Voila  ma  maison,''  he  said. 

I  tried  to  say  in  his  language  what  I  felt ; 
and  after  my  attempt  he  spoke  of  his  house. 

It  was  very  old.  Down  underneath,  he 
said,  it  dated  from  feudal  times;  though 
I  did  not  quite  make  out  whether  all  that 
lay  under  that  mound  had  been  so  old  or 
whether  he  only  meant  the  cellars  of  his 


HOUSE  WITH  TWO  STORIES    25 

house.  It  was  a  fine  high  house,  he  said ; 
as  much  as  two  stories  high.  No  one  that 
is  famihar  with  houses  of  fifty  stories,  none 
even  that  has  known  palaces,  will  smile  at 
this  old  man's  efforts  to  tell  of  his  high 
house,  and  to  make  me  believe  that  it  rose 
to  two  stories  high,  as  we  stood  together 
by  that  sad  white  mound.  He  told  me 
his  son  was  killed.  And  that  disaster 
strangely  did  not  move  me  so  much  as 
the  white  mound  that  had  been  a  house 
and  had  had  two  stories,  for  it  seems  to 
be  common  to  every  French  family  with 
whose  fathers  I  have  chanced  to  speak  in 
ruined  cities  or  on  busy  roads  of  France. 

He  pointed  to  a  huge  white  mound  be- 
yond on  the  top  of  which  some  one  had 
stuck  a  small  cross  of  wood.  **  The  church," 
he  said.     And  that  I  knew  already. 

In  very  inadequate  French  I  tried  to 
comfort  him.  I  told  him  that  surely  France 
would  build  his  house  again.  Perhaps 
even  the  Allies;  for  I  could  not  believe 
that  we  shall  have  done  enough  if  we  merely 


^6    UNHAPPY  FAR  OFF-THINGS 

drive  the  Germans  out  of  France  and  leave 
this  poor  old  man  still  wandering  home- 
less. I  told  him  that  surely  in  the  future 
Croisilles  would  stand  again. 

He  took  no  interest  in  anything  that  I 
said.  His  house  of  two  stories  was  down, 
his  son  was  dead,  the  little  village  of  Croi- 
silles had  gone  away ;  he  had  only  one  hope 
from  the  future.  When  I  had  finished 
speaking  of  the  future,  he  raised  a  knobbed 
thick  stick  that  he  carried,  up  to  the  level 
of  his  throat,  surely  his  son's  old  trench 
stick,  and  there  he  let  it  dangle  from  a 
piece  of  string  in  the  handle,  which  he  held 
against  his  neck.  He  watched  me  shrewdly 
and  attentively  meanwhile,  for  I  was  a 
stranger  and  was  to  be  taught  something 
I  might  not  know,  a  thing  that  was  nec- 
essary for  all  men  to  learn.  ^'Le  Kaiser y^ 
he  said.  "Yes,"  I  said,  "the  Kaiser." 
But  I  pronounced  the  word  Kaiser  dif- 
ferently from  him,  and  he  repeated  again 
"Xe  Kaiser '\  and  watched  me  closely  to 
be  sure  that  I  understood.    And  then  he 


HOUSE  WITH  TWO  STORIES    27 

said  ^'Pendu^\  and  made  the  stick  quiver  a 
little  as  it  dangled  from  its  string.  ''Oui^^ 
I  said,  ''Pendur 

Did  I  understand?  He  was  not  yet 
quite  sure.  It  was  important  that  this 
thing  should  be  quite  decided  between  us 
as  we  stood  on  this  road  through  what  had 
been  Croisilles,  where  he  had  lived  through 
many  sunny  years  and  I  had  dwelt  for  a 
season  amongst  rats.  ^^Pendu!  Pendu!'' 
he  said.     Yes,  I  agreed. 

It  was  all  right.  The  old  man  almost 
smiled. 

I  offered  him  a  cigarette  and  we  lit  two 
from  an  apparatus  of  flint  and  steel  and 
petrol  that  the  old  man  had  in  his  pocket. 

He  showed  me  a  photograph  of  himself 
and  a  passport  to  prove,  I  suppose,  that  he 
was  not  a  spy.  One  could  not  recognise 
the  likeness,  for  it  must  have  been  taken 
on  some  happier  day,  before  he  had  seen 
his  house  of  two  stories  lying  there  by  the 
road.  But  he  was  no  spy,  for  there  were 
tears  in  his  eyes;   and  Prussians,  I  think, 


28    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

have  no  tears  for  what  we  saw  as  we  gazed 
across  the  village  of  Croisilles. 

I  spoke  of  the  rebuilding  of  his  house  no 
more,  I  spoke  no  more  of  the  new  Croisilles 
shining  through  the  future  years ;  for  these 
were  not  the  things  that  he  saw  in  the 
future  and  these  were  not  the  hopes  of  the 
poor  old  man.  He  had  one  dark  hope  of 
the  future,  and  no  others.  He  hoped  to 
see  the  Kaiser  hung  for  the  wrong  he  had 
done  to  Croisilles.  It  was  for  this  hope  he 
lived. 

Madame  or  Seiior  of  whatever  far  coun- 
try, who  may  chance  to  see  these  words, 
blame  not  this  old  man  for  the  fierce  hope 
he  cherished.  It  was  the  only  hope  he 
had.  You,  Madame,  with  your  garden, 
your  house,  your  church,  the  village  where 
all  know  you,  you  may  hope  as  a  Christian 
should ;  there  is  wide  room  for  hope  in  your 
future.  You  shall  see  the  seasons  move 
over  your  garden,  you  shall  busy  yourself 
with  your  home,  and  speak  and  share  with 
your    neighbors    innumerable    small    joys. 


HOUSE  WITH  TWO  STORIES    29 

and  find  consolation  and  beauty,  and  at 
last  rest,  in  and  around  the  church  whose 
spire  you  see  from  your  home.  You,  Senor, 
with  your  son  perhaps  growing  up,  perhaps 
wearing  already  some  sword  that  you  wore 
once,  you  can  turn  back  to  your  memories, 
or  look  with  hope  to  the  future,  with  equal 
ease. 

The  man  that  I  met  in  Croisilles  had 
none  of  these  things  at  all.  He  had  that 
one  hope  only. 

Do  not,  I  pray  you,  by  your  voice  or 
vote,  or  by  any  power  or  influence  that  you 
have,  do  anything  to  take  away  from  this 
poor  old  Frenchman  the  only  little  hope 
that  he  has  left.  The  more  trivial  his  odd 
hope  appears  to  you  compared  with  your 
own  high  hopes  that  come  so  easily  to  you 
amongst  all  your  fields  and  houses,  the 
more  cruel  a  thing  must  it  be  to  take  it 
from  him. 

I  learned  many  things  in  Croisilles,  and 
the  last  of  them  is  this  strange  one  the  old 
man    taught    me.     I    turned    and    shook 


30    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

hands  with  him  and  said  Good-bye,  for  I 
wished  to  see  again  our  old  front  Une  that 
we  used  to  hold  over  the  hill,  now  empty, 
silent  at  last.  "The  Boche  is  defeated," 
I  said.  ^'Vaincu,  VaincUy^  he  repeated. 
And  I  left  him  with  something  almost  like 
happiness  looking  out  of  his  tearful  eyes. 


BERMONDSEY  VERSUS 
WURTEMBURG 


IV 

BERMONDSEY   VERSUS 
WURTEMBURG 

THE  trees  grew  thinner  and  thinner 
along  the  road,  then  ceased  altogether, 
and  suddenly  we  saw  Albert  in  the  wood  of 
the  ghosts  of  murdered  trees,  all  grey  and 
deserted. 

Descending  into  Albert  past  trees  in  their 
agony  we  came  all  at  once  on  the  houses. 
You  did  not  see  them  far  off  as  in  other 
cities ;  we  came  on  them  all  at  once  as  you 
come  on  a  corpse  in  the  grass. 

We  stopped  and  stood  by  a  house  that 
was  covered  with  plaster  marked  off  to 
look  like  great  stones,  its  pitiful  pretence 
laid  bare,  the  slates  gone  and  the  rooms 
gone,  the  plaster  all  pitted  with  shrapnel. 
Near  it  lay  an    iron    railing,   a  handrail 


34    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

blown  there  from  the  railway  bridge;  a 
shrapnel  bullet  had  passed  through  its 
twisted  stem  as  though  it  had  gone  through 
butter.  And  beside  the  handrail  lay  one 
of  the  great  steel  supports  of  the  bridge, 
that  had  floated  there  upon  some  flaming 
draught;  the  end  of  it  bent  and  splayed 
as  though  it  had  been  a  slender  cane  that 
some  one  had  shoved  too  hard  into  the  earth. 

There  had  been  a  force  abroad  in  Albert 
that  could  do  these  things,  an  iron  force 
that  had  no  mercy  for  iron,  a  mighty 
mechanical  contrivance  that  could  take 
machinery  and  pull  it  all  to  pieces  in  a 
moment  as  a  child  takes  a  flower  to  pieces 
petal  by  petal. 

When  such  a  force  was  abroad  what 
chance  had  man  ?  It  had  come  down  upon 
Albert  suddenly,  and  railway  lines  and 
bridges  had  dropped  and  withered,  and 
the  houses  had  stooped  down  in  the  blasting 
heat,  and  in  that  attitude  I  found  them 
still,  —  worn-out,  melancholy  heaps  over- 
come by  disaster. 


BERMONDSEY  35 

Pieces  of  paper  rustled  about  like  foot- 
steps, dirt  covered  the  ruins,  fragments  of 
rusty  shells  lay  as  unsightly  and  dirty  as 
that  which  they  had  destroyed.  Cleaned 
up  and  polished,  and  priced  at  half-a- 
crown  apiece,  these  fragments  may  look 
romantic  some  day  in  a  London  shop; 
but  to-day  in  Albert  they  look  unclean  and 
untidy  like  a  cheap  knife  sticking  up  from 
a  murdered  woman's  ribs,  whose  dress  is 
long  out  of  fashion. 

The  stale  smell  of  war  arose  from  the 
desolation. 

A  British  helmet  dented  in  like  an  old 
bowler,  but  tragic,  not  absurd,  lay  near 
a  barrel  and  a  teapot. 

On  a  wall  that  rose  above  a  heap  of  dirty 
and  smashed  rafters  was  written  in  red 
paint  KOMP^  I.  M.  B.  K.  184.  The  red 
paint  had  dripped  down  the  wall  from 
every  letter.  Verily  we  stood  upon  the 
scene  of  the  murder. 

Opposite  those  red  letters  across  the  road 
was   a   house   with   traces    of   a   pleasant 


36    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

ornament  below  the  sills  of  the  windows, 
a  design  of  grapes  and  vine.  Some  one 
had  stuck  up  a  wooden  boot  on  a  peg  out- 
side the  door. 

Perhaps  the  cheery  design  on  the  wall 
attracted  me.  I  entered  the  house  and 
looked  round. 

A  chunk  of  shell  lay  on  the  floor,  and  a 
little  decanter,  only  chipped  at  the  lip,  and 
part  of  a  haversack  of  horse-skin.  There 
were  pretty  tiles  on  the  floor,  but  dry  mud 
buried  them  deep :  it  was  like  the  age-old 
dirt  that  gathers  in  temples  in  Africa. 
A  man's  waistcoat  lay  on  the  mud  and  part 
of  a  woman's  stays:  the  waistcoat  was 
black  and  was  probably  kept  for  Sundays, 
That  was  all  that  there  was  to  see  on 
the  ground  floor;  no  more  flotsam  than 
that  had  come  down  to  these  days  from 
peace. 

A  forlorn  stairway  tried  still  to  wind 
upstairs.  It  went  up  out  of  a  corner  of  the 
room.  It  seemed  still  to  believe  that  there 
was  an  upper  story,  still  to  feel  that  this 


BERMONDSEY  87 

was  a  house ;  there  seemed  a  hope  in  the 
twists  of  that  battered  staircase  that  men 
would  yet  come  again  and  seek  sleep  at 
evening  by  the  way  of  those  broken  steps ; 
the  handrail  and  the  banisters  streamed 
down  from  the  top,  a  woman's  dress  lolled 
down  from  the  upper  room  above  those 
aimless  steps,  the  laths  of  the  ceiling 
gaped,  the  plaster  was  gone ;  of  all  the  hopes 
men  hope  that  can  never  be  fulfilled,  of 
all  desires  that  ever  come  too  late,  most 
futile  was  the  hope  expressed  by  that  stair- 
way's posture  that  ever  a  family  would 
come  home  there  again  or  tread  those 
steps  once  more.  And,  if  in  some  far 
country  one  should  hope,  who  has  not  seen 
Albert,  out  of  compassion  for  these  poor 
people  of  France,  that  where  a  staircase  still 
remains  there  may  be  enough  of  a  house  to 
shelter  those  who  called  it  home  again,  I 
will  tell  one  thing  more :  there  blew  inside 
that  house  the  same  wind  that  blew  outside, 
the  wind  that  wandered  free  over  miles  of 
plains  wandered  unchecked  through  that 


38    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

house;  there  was  no  indoors  or  outdoors 
any  more. 

And  on  the  wall  of  the  room  in  which  I 
stood,  some  one  had  proudly  written  his 
regiment's  name,  The  156th  Wurtem- 
burgers.  It  was  written  in  chalk;  and 
another  man  had  come  and  had  written 
two  words  before  it  and  had  recorded  the 
name  of  his  own  regiment  too.  And  the 
writing  that  remains  after  these  two  men 
are  gone,  and  the  lonely  house  is  silent  but 
for  the  wind  and  the  things  that  creak  as 
it  blows,  the  only  message  of  this  deserted 
house,  is  this  mighty  record,  this  rare  line 
of  history,  illwritten :  "Lost  by  the  156th 
Wurtemburgers,  retaken  by  the  Bermond- 
sey  Butterflies." 

Two  men  wrote  that  sentence  between 
them.  And,  as  with  Homer,  no  one  knows 
who  they  were.  And  like  Homer  their 
words  were  epic. 


ON  AN  OLD  BATTLE  FIELD 


ON  AN  OLD  BATTLE  FIELD 

1  ENTERED  an  old  battle  field  through  a 
garden  gate,  a  pale  green  gate  by  the 
Bapaume- Arras  road.  The  cheerful  green 
attracted  me  in  the  deeps  of  the  desolation 
as  an  emerald  might  in  a  dust-bin.  I 
entered  through  that  homely  garden  gate: 
it  had  no  hinges,  no  pillars,  it  lolled  on  a 
heap  of  stone.  I  came  to  it  from  the  road ; 
this  alone  was  not  battle  field;  the  road 
alone  was  made  and  tended  and  kept ;  all 
the  rest  was  battle  field  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  see.  Over  a  large  whitish  heap  lay 
a  Virginia  creeper,  turning  a  dull  crimson. 
And  the  presence  of  this  creeper  mourning 
there  in  the  waste  showed  unmistakably 
that  the  heap  had  been  a  house.  All  the 
living  things  were  gone  that  had  called  this 
white  heap  Home:    the  father  would  be 


42    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

fighting  somewhere;  the  children  would 
have  fled,  if  there  had  been  time ;  the  dog 
would  have  gone  with  them,  or  perhaps, 
if  there  was  not  time,  he  served  other 
masters;  the  cat  would  have  made  a  lair 
for  herself  and  stalked  mice  at  night  through 
the  trenches.  All  the  live  things  that  we 
ever  consider  were  gone ;  the  creeper  alone 
remained,  the  only  mourner,  clinging  to 
fallen  stones  that  had  supported  it  once. 
And  I  knew  by  its  presence  here  there 
had  been  a  house.  And  by  the  texture  or 
composition  of  the  ruin  all  round  I  saw  that 
a  village  had  stbod  there.  There  are  calami- 
ties one  does  not  contemplate,  when  one 
thinks  of  time  and  change.  Death,  passing 
away,  even  ruin,  are  all  the  human  lot; 
but  one  contemplates  ruin  as  brought  by 
kindly  ages,  coming  slowly  at  last,  with 
lichen  and  ivy  and  moss,  its  harsher  aspects 
all  hidden  with  green,  coming  with  dignity 
and  in  due  season.  Thus  our  works  should 
pass  away;  our  worst  fears  contemplated 
no  more  than  this. 


ON  AN  OLD  BATTLE  FIELD    43 

But  here  in  a  single  day,  perhaps  in  a 
moment  with  one  discharge  from  a  battery, 
all  the  little  things  that  one  family  cared 
for,  their  house,  their  garden,  and  the 
garden  paths,  and  then  the  village  and  the 
road  through  the  village,  and  the  old  land- 
marks that  the  old  people  remembered,  and 
countless  treasured  things,  were  all  turned 
into  rubbish. 

And  these  things  that  one  did  not  contem- 
plate have  happened  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
with  such  disaster  vast  plains  and  hills  are 
covered,  because  of  the  German  war. 

Deep  wells,  old  cellars,  battered  trenches 
and  dug-outs,  lie  in  the  rubbish  and  weeds 
under  the  intricate  wreckage  of  peace  and 
war.  It  will  be  a  bad  place  years  hence 
for  wanderers  lost  at  night. 

When  the  village  went,  trenches  came; 
and,  in  the  same  storm  that  had  crumbled 
the  village,  the  trenches  withered  too; 
shells  still  thump  on  to  the  North,  but 
peace  and  war  alike  have  deserted  the  vil- 
lage.    Grass  has  begun  to  return  over  torn 


44    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

earth  on  edges  of  trenches.  Abundant  wire 
rusts  away  by  its  twisted  stakes  of  steel. 
Not  a  path  of  old,  not  a  lane  nor  a  doorway 
there,  but  is  barred  and  cut  off  by  wire; 
and  the  wire  in  its  turn  has  been  cut  by 
shells  and  lies  in  ungathered  swathes.  A 
pair  of  wheels  moulders  amongst  weeds, 
and  may  be  of  peace  or  of  war,  it  is  too 
broken  down  for  any  one  to  say.  A  great 
bar  of  iron  lies  cracked  across  as  though  one 
of  the  elder  giants  had  handled  it  carelessly. 
Another  mound  near  by  with  an  old  green 
beam  sticking  out  of  it  was  also  once  a 
house.  A  trench  runs  by  it.  A  German 
bomb  with  its  wooden  handle,  some  bottles, 
a  bucket,  a  petrol  tin  and  some  bricks  and 
stones,  lie  in  the  trench.  A  young  elder 
tree  grows  amongst  them.  And  over  all 
the  ruin  and  rubbish  Nature  with  all  her 
wealth  and  luxury  comes  back  to  her  old 
inheritance,  holding  again  the  land  that 
she  held  so  long,  before  the  houses  came. 

A  garden  gate  of  iron  has  been  flung 
across  a  well.    Then  a  deep  cellar  into 


ON  AN  OLD  BATTLE  FIELD    45 

which  a  whole  house  seems  to  have  slanted 
down.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  is  an  or- 
chard. A  huge  shell  has  uprooted,  but  not 
killed,  an  apple-tree;  another  apple-tree 
stands  stone  dead  on  the  edge  of  a  crater : 
most  of  the  trees  are  dead. 

British  aeroplanes  drone  over  continually. 
A  great  gun  goes  by  towards  Bapaume, 
dragged  by  a  slow  engine  with  caterpillar 
wheels.  The  gun  is  all  blotched  green  and 
yellow.  Four  or  five  men  are  seated  on 
the  huge  barrel  alone. 

Dark  old  steps  near  the  orchard  run 
down  into  a  dug-out,  with  a  cartridge-case 
tied  to  a  piece  of  wood  beside  it  to  beat 
when  the  gas  came.  A  telephone  wire  lies 
listlessly  by  the  opening.  A  patch  of 
Michaelmas  daisies,  deep  mauve  and  pale 
mauve,  and  a  bright  yellow  flower  beside 
them,  show  where  a  garden  used  to  stand 
near  by.  Above  the  dug-out  a  patch  of 
jagged  earth  shows  in  three  clear  layers 
under  the  weeds :  four  inches  of  grey  road- 
metal,  imported,  for  all  this  country  is  chalk 


46    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

and  clay ;  two  inches  of  flint  below  it ;  and 
under  that  an  inch  of  a  bright  red  stone. 
We  are  looking  then  at  a  road,  a  road 
through  a  village  trodden  by  men  and 
women,  and  the  hooves  of  horses  and 
familiar  modern  things,  a  road  so  buried, 
so  shattered,  so  overgrown,  showing  by 
chance  an  edge  in  the  midst  of  the  wilder- 
ness, that  I  could  seem  rather  to  have 
discovered  the  track  of  the  Dinosaur  in 
prehistoric  clays  than  the  highway  of  a 
little  village  that  only  five  years  ago  was 
full  of  human  faults  and  joys  and  songs 
and  tiny  tears.  Down  that  road  before 
the  plans  of  the  Kaiser  began  to  fumble 
with  the  earth,  down  that  road,  —  but  it 
is  useless  to  look  back,  we  are  too  far  away 
from  five  years  ago,  too  far  away  from 
thousands  of  ordinary  things,  that  never 
seemed  as  though  they  would  ever  peer  at 
us  over  chasms  of  time,  out  of  another 
age,  utterly  far  off,  irrevocably  removed 
from  our  ways  and  days.  They  are  gone, 
those  times,  gone  like  the  Dinosaur,  gone 


ON  AN  OLD  BATTLE  FIELD    47 

with  bows  and  arrows  and  the  old  knightHer 
days.  No  splendour  marks  their  sunset 
where  I  sit,  no  dignity  of  ruined  houses, 
or  derelict  engines  of  war;  all  equally  are 
scattered  dirtily  in  the  mud,  and  common 
weeds  overpower  them;  it  is  not  ruin  but 
rubbish  that  covers  the  ground  here  and 
spreads  its  untidy  flood  for  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  miles. 

A  band  plays  in  Arras,  to  the  North  and 
East  the  shells  go  thumping  on. 

The  very  origins  of  things  are  in  doubt, 
so  much  is  jumbled  together.  It  is  as  hard 
to  make  out  just  where  the  trenches  ran, 
and  which  was  No  Man's  Land,  as  it  is  to 
tell  the  houses  from  garden  and  orchard 
and  road :  the  rubbish  covers  all.  It  is 
as  though  the  ancient  forces  of  Chaos  had 
come  back  from  the  abyss  to  fight  against 
order  and  man,  and  Chaos  had  won.  So 
lies  this  village  of  France. 

As  I  left  it  a  rat,  with  something  in  its 
mouth,  holding  its  head  high,  ran  right 
across  the  village. 


THE  REAL  THING 


VI 

THE  REAL  THING 

ONCE  at  manoeuvres,  as  the  Prussian 
Crown  Prince  charged  at  the  head  of 
his  regiment;  as  sabres  gleamed,  plumes 
streamed,  and  hooves  thundered  behind 
him,  he  is  reported  to  have  said  to  one 
that  galloped  near  him:  "Ah!  If  only 
this  were  the  real  thing !" 

One  need  not  doubt  that  the  report  is 
true.  So  a  young  man  might  feel  as  he 
led  his  regiment  of  cavalry,  for  the  scene 
would  fire  the  blood ;  all  those  young  men 
and  fine  uniforms  and  good  horses,  all 
coming  on  behind,  everything  streaming 
that  could  fioat  on  the  air,  everything 
jingling  then  which  could  ever  make  a 
sound,   a  bright   sky  no   doubt   over  the 


52    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

uniforms,  a  good  fresh  wind  for  men  and 
horses  to  gulp;  and,  behind,  the  dinking 
and  jingUng,  the  long  roll  of  hooves  thunder- 
ing. Such  a  scene  might  well  stir  emotions 
to  sigh  for  the  splendours  of  battle. 

This  is  one  side  of  war.  Mutilation  and 
death  are  another ;  misery,  cold  and  dirt ; 
pain,  and  the  intense  loneliness  of  men  left 
behind  by  armies,  with  much  to  think  of, 
no  hope,  and  a  day  or  two  to  live.  But  we 
understand  that  glory  covers  that. 

There  is  yet  a  third  side. 

I  came  to  Albert  when  the  fight  was 
far  from  it;  only  at  night  you  saw  any 
signs  of  war,  when  clouds  flashed  now 
and  then  and  curious  rockets  peered.  Al- 
bert robbed  of  peace  was  deserted  even 
by  war. 

I  will  not  say  that  Albert  was  devastated 
or  desolate,  for  these  long  words  have 
different  interpretations  and  may  easily 
be  exaggerated.  A  German  agent  might 
say  to  you  "Devastated  is  rather  a  strong 
word,  and  desolate  is  a  matter  of  opinion." 


THE  REAL  THING  53 

And  so  you  might  never  know  what  Albert 
is  Uke. 

I  will  tell  you  what  I  saw. 

Albert  was  a  large  town.  I  will  not 
write  of  all  of  it. 

I  sat  down  near  a  railway  bridge  at  the 
edge  of  the  town;  I  think  I  was  near  the 
station;  and  small  houses  had  stood  there 
with  little  gardens;  such  as  porters  and 
other  railway  folk  would  have  lived  in. 
I  sat  down  on  the  railway  and  looked  at 
one  of  these  houses,  for  it  had  clearly  been 
a  house.  It  was  at  the  back  of  it  that  most 
remained,  in  what  must  have  been  a  garden. 
A  girder  torn  up  like  a  pack  of  cards  lay 
on  the  leg  of  a  table  amongst  a  brick  wall 
by  an  apple-tree. 

•  Lower  down  in  the  heap  was  the  frame- 
work of  a  large  four-poster  bed;  through 
it  all  a  vine  came  up  quite  green  and  still 
alive;  and  at  the  edge  of  the  heap  lay  a 
doll's  green  pram.  Small  though  the  house 
had  been  there  was  evidence  in  that  heap 
of    some    prosperity    in    more    than    one 


54    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

generation.  For  the  four-poster  bed  had 
been  a  fine  one,  good  work  in  sound  old 
timber,  before  the  bits  of  the  girder  had 
driven  it  into  the  wall ;  and  the  green  pram 
must  have  been  the  dowry  of  no  ordinary 
doll,  but  one  with  the  best  yellow  curls, 
whose  blue  eyes  could  move.  One  blue 
columbine  close  by  mourned  alone  for  the 
garden. 

The  wall  and  the  vine  and  the  bed  and 
the  girder  lay  in  an  orchard,  and  some  of 
the  apple-trees  were  standing  yet,  though 
the  orchard  had  been  terribly  worked  by 
shell  fire.  All  that  still  stood  were  dead. 
Some  stood  upon  the  very  edge  of  craters ; 
their  leaves  and  twigs  and  bark  had  been 
stripped  by  one  blast  in  a  moment;  and 
they  had  tottered,  with  stunted,  black, 
gesticulating  branches;  and  so  they  stood 
to-day. 

The  curls  of  a  mattress  lay  on'the  ground, 
clipped  once  from  a  horse's  mane. 

After  looking  for  some  while  across  the 
orchard    one    suddenly    noticed    that    the 


THE  REAL  THING  55 

Cathedral  had  stood  on  the  other  side.  It 
was  draped,  when  we  saw  it  closer,  as  with 
a  huge  grey  cloak,  the  lead  of  its  roof  having 
come  down  and  covered  it. 

Near  the  house  of  that  petted  doll  (as 
I  came  to  think  of  it)  a  road  ran  by  on  the 
other  side  of  the  railway.  Great  shells 
had  dropped  along  it  with  terrible  regular- 
ity. You  could  imagine  Death  striding 
down  it  with  exact  five-yard  paces,  on  his 
own  day,  claiming  his  own.  As  I  stood 
on  the  road  something  whispered  behind 
me,  and  I  saw,  stirring  round  with  the 
wind,  in  one  of  those  footsteps  of  Death, 
a  double  page  of  a  book  open  at  Chapter 
two:  and  Chapter  two  was  headed  with 
the  proverb  :  "  Un  malheur  ne  vient  jamais 
seuV  Misfortunes  never  come  singly ! 
And  on  that  dreadful  road,  with  shell-holes 
every  five  yards  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see, 
and  fiat  beyond  it  the  whole  city  in  ruin. 
What  harmless  girl  or  old  man  had  been 
reading  that  dreadful  prophecy  when  the 
Germans    came    down    upon    Albert    and 


56    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

involved  it,  and  themselves,  and  that  book, 
all  except  those  two  pages,  in  such  multipli- 
cation of  ruin  ? 

Surely  indeed  there  is  a  third  side  to  war : 
for  what  had  the  doll  done,  that  used  to 
have  a  green  pram,  to  deserve  to  share 
thus  in  the  fall  and  punishment  of  an 
Emperor  ? 


A  GARDEN  OF  ARRAS 


VII 
A  GARDEN  OF  ARRAS 

AS  I  walked  through  Arras  from  the 
Spanish  gate  gardens  flashed  as  I 
went,  one  by  one,  through  the  houses. 

I  stepped  in  over  the  window-sill  of  one 
of  the  houses,  attracted  by  the  gleam  of  a 
garden  dimly  beyond :  and  went  through 
the  empty  house,  empty  of  people,  empty  of 
furniture,  empty  of  plaster,  and  entered 
the  garden  through  an  empty  doorway. 

When  I  came  near  it  seemed  less  like  a 
garden.  At  first  it  had  almost  seemed  to 
beckon  to  passers-by  in  the  street;  so  rare 
are  gardens  now  in  this  part  of  France,  that 
it  seemed  to  have  more  than  garden's 
share  of  mystery,  all  in  the  silence  there 
at  the  back  of  the  silent  house ;  but  when 
one  entered  it  some  of  the  mystery  went, 
and  seemed  to  hide  in  a  further  part  of  the 


60    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

garden  amongst  wild  shrubs  and  innumer- 
able weeds. 

British  aeroplanes  frequently  roared  over, 
disturbing  the  congregation  of  Arras  Cathe- 
dral a  few  hundred  yards  away,  who  rose 
cawing  and  wheeled  over  the  garden;  for 
only  jackdaws  come  to  Arras  Cathedral 
now,  besides  a  few  pigeons. 

Unkempt  beside  me  a  bamboo  flourished 
wildly,  having  no  need  of  man.  On  the 
other  side  of  the  small  wild  track  that  had 
been  the  garden  path  the  skeletons  of  hot- 
houses stood,  surrounded  by  nettles ;  their 
pipes  lie  all  about,  shattered  and  riddled 
through. 

Branches  of  rose  break  up  through  the 
myriad  nettles,  but  only  to  be  seized  and 
choked  by  columbine.  A  late  moth  looks 
for  flowers  not  quite  in  vain.  It  hovers  on 
wing-beats  that  are  invisibly  swift  by  its 
lonely  autumn  flower,  then  darts  away  over 
the  desolation  which  is  no  desolation  to  a 
moth :  man  has  destroyed  man ;  nature 
comes  back;   it  is  well:   that  must  be  the 


A  GARDEN  OF  ARRAS         61 

brief  philosophy  of  myriads  of  tiny  things 
whose  way  of  life  one  seldom  considered 
before;  now  that  man's  cities  are  down, 
now  that  ruin  and  misery  confront  us 
whatever  way  we  turn,  one  notices  more 
the  small  things  that  are  left. 

One  of  the  greenhouses  is  almost  all  gone, 
a  tumbled  mass  that  might  be  a  piece  of 
Babylon,  if  archeologists  should  come  to 
study  it.  But  it  is  too  sad  to  study,  too  un- 
tidy to  have  any  interest,  and,  alas,  too 
common :  there  are  hundreds  of  miles  of  this. 

The  other  greenhouse,  a  sad,  ungainly 
skeleton,  is  possessed  by  grass  and  weeds. 
On  the  raised  centre  many  flowerpots  were 
neatly  arranged  once :  they  stand  in  orderly 
lines,  but  each  separate  one  is  broken: 
none  contain  flowers  any  more,  but  only 
grass.  And  the  grass  of  the  greenhouse 
lies  there  in  showers,  all  grey.  No  one  has 
tidied  anything  up  there  for  years. 

A  meadowsweet  had  come  into  that 
greenhouse  and  dwelt  there  in  that  abode 
of  fine  tropical  flowers;   and  one  night  an 


62    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

elder  tree  had  entered  and  is  now  as  high 
as  the  house ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  green- 
house grass  has  come  in  Hke  a  wave;  for 
change  and  disaster  are  far-reaching  and 
are  only  mirrored  here.  This  desolate 
garden  and  its  ruined  house  are  a  part  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  such,  or  millions. 
Mathematics  will  give  you  no  picture  of 
what  France  has  suffered.  If  I  tell  you 
what  one  garden  is  like,  one  village,  one 
house,  one  cathedral,  after  the  German 
war  has  swept  by,  and  if  you  read  my  words, 
I  may  help  you  perhaps  to  imagine  more 
easily  what  France  has  suffered  than  if 
I  spoke  of  millions.  I  speak  of  one  garden 
in  Arras ;  and  you  might  walk  from  there, 
south  by  east  for  weeks,  and  find  no  garden 
that  has  suffered  less. 

It  is  all  weeds  and  elders.  An  apple- 
tree  rises  out  of  a  mass  of  nettles,  but  it  is 
quite  dead.  Wild  rose  trees  show  here 
and  there,  or  roses  that  have  run  wild  like 
the  cats  of  No  Man's  Land.  And  once  I 
saw  a  rosebush  that  had  been  planted  in 


A  GARDEN  OF  ARRAS         63 

a  pot,  and  still  grew  there  as  though  it 
still  remembered  man,  but  the  flowerpot 
was  shattered  like  all  the  pots  in  that  garden 
and  the  rose  grew  wild  as  any  in  any  hedge. 

The  ivy  alone  grows  on  over  a  mighty 
wall,  and  seems  to  care  not.  The  ivy  alone 
seems  not  to  mourn,  but  to  have  added 
the  last  four  years  to  its  growth  as  though 
they  were  ordinary  years.  That  corner  of 
the  wall  alone  whispers  not  of  disaster, 
it  only  seems  to  tell  of  the  passing  of  years, 
which  makes  the  ivy  strong,  and  for  which 
in  peace  as  in  war  there  is  no  care.  All 
the  rest  speaks  of  war,  of  war  that  comes 
to  gardens,  without  banners  or  trumpets 
or  splendour,  and  roots  up  everything,  and 
turns  round  and  smashes  the  house,  and 
leaves  it  all  desolate,  and  forgets  and  goes 
away.  And  when  the  histories  of  the  war 
are  written,  attacks  and  counter-attacks 
and  the  doom  of  Emperors,  who  will  re- 
member that  garden  ? 

Saddest  of  all,  as  it  seemed  to  me  watch- 
ing the  garden  paths,  were  the  spiders'  webs 


64    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

that  had  been  spun  across  them,  so  grey 
and  stout  and  strong,  fastened  from  weed 
to  weed,  with  the  spider  in  their  midst 
sitting  in  obvious  ownership.  You  knew 
then  as  you  looked  at  those  webs  across  all 
the  paths  in  the  garden  that  any  whom  you 
might  fancy  walking  the  small  paths  still, 
were  but  grey  ghosts  gone  from  thence,  no 
more  than  dreams,  hopes  and  imaginings, 
something  altogether  weaker  than  spiders' 
webs. 

And  the  old  wall  of  the  garden  that 
divides  it  from  its  neighbour,  of  solid  stone 
and  brick,  over  fifteen  feet  high,  it  is  that 
mighty  old  wall  that  held  the  romance  of 
the  garden.  I  do  not  tell  the  tale  of  that 
garden  of  Arras,  for  that  is  conjecture  and 
I  only  tell  what  I  saw,  in  order  that  some 
one  perhaps  in  some  far  country  may  know 
what  happened  in  thousands  and  thousands 
of  gardens  because  an  Emperor  sighed,  and 
longed  for  the  splendour  of  war.  The  tale 
is  but  conjecture,  yet  all  the  romance  is 
there;   for  picture  a  wall  over  fifteen  feet 


A  GARDEN  OF  ARRAS         65 

high  built  as  they  built  long  ago,  standing 
for  all  those  ages  between  two  gardens. 
For  would  not  the  temptation  arise  to 
peer  over  the  wall  if  a  young  man  heard, 
perhaps  songs,  one  evening  on  the  other  side  ? 
And  at  first  he  would  have  some  pretext 
and  afterwards  none  at  all,  and  the  pretext 
would  vary  wonderfully  little  with  the 
generations,  while  the  ivy  went  on  growing 
thicker  and  thicker.  The  thought  might 
come  of  climbing  the  wall  altogether  and 
down  the  other  side,  and  it  might  seem  too 
daring  and  be  utterly  put  away.  And  then 
one  day,  some  wonderful  summer  evening, 
the  West  all  red  and  a  new  moon  in  the 
sky,  far  voices  heard  clearly  and  white 
mists  rising,  one  wonderful  summer  day, 
back  would  come  that  thought  to  climb 
the  great  old  wall  and  go  down  the  other 
side.  Why  not  go  in  next  door  from  the 
street,  you  might  say.  That  would  be 
different,  that  would  be  calling;  that 
would  mean  ceremony,  black  hats,  and 
awkward  new  gloves,  constrained  talk  and 


66    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

little  scope  for  romance.  It  would  all  be 
the  fault  of  the  wall.  . 

With  what  diffidence,  as  the  generations 
passed,  would  each  first  peep  over  the  wall 
be  undertaken.  In  some  years  it  would 
be  scaled  from  one  side,  in  some  ages  from 
another.  What  a  barrier  that  old  red  wall 
would  have  seemed !  How  new  the  ad- 
venture would  have  seemed  in  each  age 
to  those  that  dared  it,  and  how  old  to  the 
wall !  And  in  all  those  years  the  elders 
never  made  a  door,  but  kept  that  huge  and 
haughty  separation.  And  the  ivy  quietly 
grew  greener.  And  then  one  day  a  shell 
came  from  the  East,  and,  in  a  moment, 
without  plan  or  diffidence  or  pretext, 
tumbled  away  some  yards  of  the  proud  old 
wall,  and  the  two  gardens  were  divided  no 
longer:  but  there  was  no  one  to  walk  in 
them  any  more. 

Wistfully  round  the  edge  of  the  huge 
breach  in  the  wall,  a  Michaelmas  daisy 
peered  into  the  garden,  in  whose  ruined 
paths  I  stood. 


AFTER  HELL 


VIII 
AFTER  HELL 

HE  heard  an  English  voice  shouting 
"  Paiper  !  Paiper  ! "  No  mere  spell- 
ing of  the  word  will  give  the  intonation.  It 
was  the  voice  of  English  towns  he  heard 
again.  The  very  voice  of  London  in  the 
morning.  It  seemed  like  magic,  or  like 
some  wonderfully  vivid  dream. 

He  was  only  a  hundred  miles  or  so  from 
England;  it  was  not  very  long  since  he 
had  been  there ;  yet  what  he  heard  seemed 
like  an  enchanted  dream,  because  only  the 
day  before  he  had  been  in  the  trenches. 

They  had  been  twelve  days  in  the  trenches 
and  had  marched  out  at  evening.  They 
had  marched  five  miles  and  were  among 
tin  huts  in  quite  a  different  world.  Through 
the  doorways  of  the  huts  green  grass  could 


70    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

be  seen  and  the  sun  was  shining  on  it.  It 
was  morning.  Everything  was  strangely- 
different.  You  saw  more  faces  smiling. 
Men  were  not  so  calm  as  they  had  been 
during  the  last  twelve  days,  the  last  six 
especially :  some  one  was  kicking  a  foot- 
ball at  somebody  else's  hut  and  there  was 
excitement  about  it. 

Guns  were  still  firing :  but  they  thought 
of  death  now  as  one  who  walked  on  the 
other  side  of  the  hills,  no  longer  as  a  neigh- 
bour, as  one  who  might  drop  in  at  any 
moment,  and  sometimes  did,  while  they 
were  taking  tea.  It  was  not  that  they 
had  been  afraid  of  him,  but  the  strain  of 
expectancy  was  over;  and  that  strain  be- 
ing suddenly  gone  in  a  single  night,  they 
all  had  a  need,  whether  they  knew  it  or  not, 
of  something  to  take  its  place,  so  the  foot- 
ball loomed  very  large. 

It  was  morning  and  he  had  slept  long. 
The  guns  that  grew  active  at  dawn  had 
not  waked  him ;  in  those  twelve  days  they 
had  grown  too  familiar,  but  he  woke  wide 


AFTER  HELL  71 

when  he  heard  the  young  English  soldier 
with  a  bundle  of  three-days'-old  papers 
under  his  arm  calling  "Paiper,  Paiper !"  — 
bringing  to  that  strange  camp  the  voice  of 
the  English  towns.  He  woke  wide  at  that 
wonder;  and  saw  the  sun  shining  cheerily, 
on  desolation  with  a  tinge  of  green  in  it, 
which  even  by  itself  rejoiced  him  on  that 
morning  after  those  twelve  days  amongst 
mud,  looking  at  mud,  surrounded  by  mud, 
protected  by  mud,  sharing  with  mud  the 
liability  to  be  suddenly  blown  high  and  to 
come  down  in  a  shower  on  other  men's 
helmets  and  coats. 

He  wondered  if  Dante  when  he  came  up 
from  Hell  heard  any  one  calling  amongst 
the  verdure,  in  sunlight,  any  familiar  call 
such  as  merchants  use,  some  trivial  song 
or  cry  of  his  native  city. 


A  HAPPY  VALLEY 


IX 
A  HAPPY  VALLEY 

THE  enemy  attacked  the  Happy  Val- 
ley." I  read  these  words  in  a  paper 
at  the  time  of  the  taking  of  Albert,  for  the 
second  time,  by  our  troops.  And  the 
words  brought  back  Albert  to  me  like  a 
spell,  Albert  at  the  end  of  the  mighty 
Bapaume- Albert  road,  that  pathway  of 
Mars  down  which  he  had  stalked  so  tre- 
mendously through  his  garden,  the  wide 
waste  battle  fields  of  the  Somme.  The 
words  brought  back  Albert  at  the  end  of 
that  road  in  the  sunset,  and  the  cathedral 
seen  against  the  West,  and  the  gilded 
Virgin  half  cast  down  but  incapable  of 
losing  dignity,  and  evening  coming  down 
over  the  marshes.  They  brought  it  back 
like  a  spell.     Like  two  spells  rather,  that 


76    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

some  magician  had  mixed.  Picture  some 
magician  of  old  in  his  sombre  wonderful 
chamber  wishing  dreams  to  transport  him 
far  off  to  delectable  valleys.  He  sits 
him  down  and  writes  out  a  spell  on  parch- 
ment, slowly  and  with  effort  of  aged  mem- 
ory, though  he  remembered  it  easily  once. 
The  shadows  of  crocodiles  and  antique  gods 
flicker  on  walls  and  ceiling  from  a  gusty 
flame  as  he  writes;  and  in  the  end  he 
writes  the  spell  out  wrongly,  and  mixes 
up  with  the  valleys  where  he  would  rest 
dark  bits  of  the  region  of  Hell.  So  one 
sees  Albert  again  and  its  Happy  Valley. 

I  do  not  know  which  the  Happy  Valley 
is,  for  so  many  little  valleys  run  in  and  out 
about  Albert;  and  with  a  little  effort  of 
imagination,  having  only  seen  them  full 
of  the  ruin  of  war,  one  can  fancy  any  of 
them  being  once  named  happy.  Yet  one 
there  is  away  to  the  east  of  Albert  which 
even  up  to  last  Autumn  seemed  able  to 
bear  this  name,  so  secluded  it  was  in  that 
awful  garden  of  Mars ;  a  tiny  valley  running 


A  HAPPY  VALLEY  77 

into  the  wood  of  Becourt.  A  few  yards 
higher  up  and  all  was  desolation,  a  little 
further  along  a  lonely  road  and  you  saw 
Albert  mourning  over  irreparable  vistas 
of  ruin  and  wasted  fields;  but  the  little 
valley  ran  into  the  wood  of  Becourt  and 
sheltered  there,  and  there  you  saw  scarcely 
any  signs  of  war.  It  might  almost  have 
been  an  English  valley  by  the  side  of  an 
English  wood.  The  soil  was  the  same 
brown  clay  that  you  see  in  the  South  of 
England  above  the  downs  and  the  chalk; 
the  wood  was  a  hazel  wood  such  as  grow 
in  England,  thinned  a  good  deal,  as  Eng- 
lish hazels  are,  but  with  several  tall  trees 
still  growing;  and  plants  were  there  and 
late  flowers  such  as  grow  in  Surrey  and 
Kent.  And  at  the  end  of  the  valley,  just 
in  the  shadow  of  that  familiar  homely  wood, 
a  hundred  British  oflicers  rest  forever. 

As  the  world  is  to-day  perhaps  that  ob- 
scure spot,  as  fittingly  as  any,  might  be 
named  the  Happy  Valley. 


IN  BETHUNE 


IN  BETHUNE 

UNDER  all  ruins  is  history,  as  every 
tourist  knows.  Indeed  the  dust  that 
gathers  above  the  ruin  of  cities  may  be 
said  to  be  the  cover  of  the  most  wonderful 
of  the  picture-books  of  Time,  those  secret 
books  into  which  we  sometimes  peep.  We 
turn  no  more  perhaps  than  the  corner  of  a 
single  page  in  our  prying,  but  we  catch  a 
glimpse  there  of  things  so  gorgeous,  in  the 
book  that  we  are  not  meant  to  see,  that  it 
is  worth  while  to  travel  to  far  countries, 
whoever  can,  to  see  one  of  those  books, 
and  where  the  edges  are  turned  up  a  little 
to  catch  sight  of  those  strange  winged 
bulls  and  mysterious  kings  and  lion-headed 
gods  that  were  not  meant  for  us.  And  out 
of  the  glimpse  one  catches  from  odd  corners 


82    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

of  those  volumes  of  Time,  where  old  cen- 
turies hide,  one  builds  up  part  by  guesses, 
part  by  fancy,  mixed  with  but  little  knowl- 
edge, a  tale  or  theory  of  how  men  and 
women  lived  in  unknown  ages  in  the  faith 
of  forgotten  gods. 

Such  a  people  lived  in  Timgad,  and  left 
it  probably  about  the  time  that  waning 
Rome  began  to  call  home  her  outposts. 
Long  after  the  citizens  left  the  city  stood 
on  that  high  plateau  in  Africa  teaching 
shepherd  Arabs  what  Rome  had  been : 
even  to-day  its  great  arches  and  parts  of 
its  temples  stand :  its  paved  streets  are 
still  grooved  clearly  with  the  wheel-ruts 
of  chariots,  and  beaten  down  on  each  side 
of  the  centre  by  the  pairs  of  horses  that 
drew  them  two  thousand  years  ago.  When 
all  the  clatter  had  died  away  Timgad  stood 
there  in  silence. 

At  Pompeii  city  and  citizens  ended  to- 
gether. Pompeii  did  not  mourn  among 
strangers,  a  city  without  a  people,  but  was 
buried  at  once,  closed  like  an  ancient  book. 


IN  BETHUNE  83 

I  doubt  if  any  one  knows  why  its  gods 
deserted  Luxor,  or  Luxor  lost  faith  in  its 
gods,  or  in  itself;  conquest  from  over  the 
desert  or  down  the  Nile,  I  suppose,  or 
corruption  within.  Who  knows  ?  But  one 
day  I  saw  a  woman  come  out  from  the  back 
of  her  house  and  empty  a  basket  full  of 
dust  and  rubbish  right  into  the  temple  at 
Luxor,  where  a  dark  green  god  is  seated, 
three  times  the  size  of  a  man,  buried  as 
high  as  his  waist.  I  suppose  that  what  I 
saw  had  been  happening  oiBF  and  on  pretty 
well  every  morning  for  the  last  four  thou- 
sand years.  Safe  under  the  dust  that  that 
woman  threw,  and  the  women  that  lived 
before  her.  Time  hid  his  secrets. 

And  then  I  have  seen  the  edges  of  stones 
in  deserts  that  might  or  might  not  have 
been  cities :  they  had  fallen  so  long  that 
you  could  hardly  say. 

At  all  these  cities  whether  disaster  met 
them,  and  ruin  came  suddenly  on  to 
crowded  streets;  or  whether  they  passed 
slowly   out   of  fashion,   and  grew   quieter 


84    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

year  by  year  while  the  jackals  drew  nearer 
and  nearer;  at  all  these  cities  one  can 
look  with  interest  and  not  be  saddened 
by  the  faintest  sorrow  for  anything  that 
happened  to  such  a  different  people  so 
very  long  ago.  Ram-headed  gods,  al- 
though their  horns  be  broken  and  all  their 
worshippers  gone;  armies  whose  elephants 
have  turned  against  them;  kings  whose 
ancestors  have  eclipsed  their  faces  in  heaven 
and  left  them  helpless  against  the  onslaught 
of  the  stars ;  not  a  tear  is  given  for  one  of 
these  to-day. 

But  when  in  ruins  as  complete  as  Pompeii, 
as  desolate  as  Timgad  amongst  its  African 
hills,  you  see  the  remnant  of  a  pack  of 
cards  lying  with  what  remains  of  the  stock 
of  a  draper's  shop;  and  the  front  part  of 
the  shop  and  the  snug  room  at  the  back 
gape  side  by  side  together  in  equal  misery, 
as  though  there  had  never  been  a  barrier 
between  the  counter  with  its  wares  and 
the  good  mahogany  table  with  its  decanters ; 
then  in  the  rustling  of  papers  that  blow 


IN  BETHUNE  85 

with  dust  along  long-desolate  floors  one 
hears  the  whisper  of  Disaster,  saying  "See; 
I  have  come."  For  under  plaster  shaken 
down  by  calamity,  and  red  dust  that  once 
was  bricks,  it  is  our  own  age  that  is  lying ; 
and  the  little  things  that  lie  about  the 
floors  are  relics  of  the  twentieth  century. 

Therefore  in  the  streets  of  Bethune  the 
wistful  appeal  that  is  in  all  things  lost  far 
off  and  utterly  passed  away  cries  out  with 
an  insistence  that  is  never  felt  in  the  older 
fallen  cities.  No  doubt  to  future  times 
the  age  that  lies  under  plaster  in  Bethune, 
with  thin,  bare  laths  standing  over  it,  will 
appear  an  age  of  glory;  and  yet  to  thou- 
sands that  went  one  day  from  its  streets 
leaving  all  manner  of  small  things  behind, 
it  may  well  have  been  an  age  full  of  far 
other  promises,  no  less  golden  to  them,  no 
less  magical  even,  though  too  little  to  stir 
the  pen  of  History,  busy  with  batteries 
and  imperial  dooms.  So  that  to  these, 
whatever  others  may  write,  the  twentieth 
century  will  not  be  the  age  of  strategy  but 


86    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

will  only  seem  to  have  been  those  fourteen 
lost  quiet  summers  whose  fruits  lie  under 
the  plaster. 

That  layer  of  plaster  and  brick-dust  lies 
on  the  age  that  has  gone,  as  final,  as  fatal, 
as  the  layer  of  flints  that  covers  the  top 
of  the  chalk  and  marks  the  end  of  an  epoch 
and  some  unknown  geologic  catastrophe. 

It  is  only  by  the  little  things  in  Bethune, 
lying  where  they  were  left,  that  one  can 
trace  at  all  what  kind  of  house  each  was, 
or  guess  at  the  people  who  dwelt  in  it.  It 
is  only  by  a  potato  growing  where  pave- 
ment was,  and  flowering  vigorously  under 
a  vacant  window,  that  one  can  guess  that 
the  battered  house  beside  it  was  once  a 
fruiterer's  shop,  whence  the  potato  rolled 
away  when  man  fell  on  evil  days,  and  found 
the  street  no  longer  harsh  and  unfriendly, 
but  soft  and  fertile  like  the  primal  waste, 
and  took  root  and  throve  there  as  its  fore- 
bears throve  before  it  in  another  Continent 
before  the  coming  of  man. 

Across  the  street,  in  the  dust  of  a  stricken 


IN  BETHUNE  87 

house,  the  implements  of  his  trade  show 
where  a  carpenter  Hved  when  disaster  came 
so  suddenly,  quite  good  tools,  some  still 
upon  shelves,  some  amongst  broken  things 
that  lie  all  over  the  floor.  And  further 
along  the  street  in  which  these  things  are 
some  one  has  put  up  a  great  iron  shutter 
that  was  to  protect  his  shop.  It  has  a 
graceful  border  of  painted  irises  all  the 
way  up  each  side.  It  might  have  been 
a  jeweller  that  would  have  made  such  a 
shutter.  The  shutter  alone  remains  stand- 
ing straight  upright,  and  the  whole  shop  is 
gone. 

And  just  here  the  shaken  street  ends 
and  all  the  streets  end  together.  The  rest 
is  a  mound  of  white  stones,  and  pieces  of 
bricks  with  low,  leaning  walls  surrounding 
it,  and  the  halves  of  hollow  houses;  and 
eyeing  it  round  a  corner,  one  old  tower  of 
the  cathedral,  as  though  still  gazing  over 
its  congregation  of  houses,  a  ruined,  melan- 
choly watcher.  Over  the  bricks  lie  tracks, 
but  no  more  streets.     It  is  about  the  middle 


88    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

of  the  town.  A  hawk  goes  over;  calling 
as  though  he  flew  over  the  waste,  and  as 
though  the  waste  were  his.  The  breeze 
that  carries  him  opens  old  shutters  and 
flaps  them  to  again.  Old,  useless  hinges 
moan ;  wall-paper  whispers.  Three  French 
soldiers  trying  to  find  their  homes  walk 
over  the  bricks  and  groundsel. 

It  is  the  Abomination  of  Desolation,  not 
seen  by  prophecy  far  off  in  some  fabulous 
future,  nor  remembered  from  terrible  ages 
by  the  aid  of  papyrus  and  stone,  but  fallen 
on  our  own  century,  on  the  homes  of  folk 
like  ourselves :  common  things  that  we 
knew  are  become  the  relics  of  bygone  days. 
It  is  our  own  time  that  has  ended  in  blood 
and  broken  bricks. 


IN  AN  OLD  DRAWING-ROOM 


XI 

IN  AN  OLD  DRAWING-ROOM 

THERE  was  one  house  with  a  roof  on  it 
in  Peronne.  And  there  an  officer  came 
by  moonhght  on  his  way  back  from  leave. 
He  was  looking  for  his  battalion,  which 
had  moved,  and  was  now  somewhere  in 
the  desolation  out  in  front  of  Peronne, 
or  else  was  marching  there,  no  one  quite 
knew.  Some  one  said  he  had  seen  it  march- 
ing through  Tincourt ;  the  R.  T.  O.  said 
Brie.  Those  who  did  not  know  were  always 
ready  to  help,  they  made  suggestions  and 
even  pulled  out  maps.  Why  should  they 
not?  They  were  giving  away  no  secret, 
because  they  did  not  know,  and  so  they 
followed  a  soldier's  natural  inclination  to 
give  all  the  help  they  could  to  another 
soldier.     Therefore      they      offered      their 


92    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

suggestions  like  old  friends.  They  had 
never  met  before,  might  never  meet  again ; 
but  La  France  introduces  you,  and  five 
minutes'  acquaintance  in  a  place  like  Pe- 
ronne,  where  things  may  change  so  pro- 
foundly in  one  night,  and  where  all  is  so 
tense  by  the  strange  background  of  ruin 
that  little  portions  of  time  seem  very 
valuable,  five  minutes  there  seems  quite 
a  long  time.  And  so  they  are,  for  what 
may  not  happen  in  five  minutes  any  day 
now  in  France?  Five  minutes  may  be  a 
page  of  History,  a  chapter  even,  perhaps  a 
volume.  Little  children  with  inky  fingers 
years  hence  may  sit  for  a  whole  hour  try- 
ing to  learn  and  remember  just  what  hap- 
pened during  five  minutes  in  France  some 
time  about  now.  These  are  just  reflections 
such  as  pass  through  the  mind  in  the  moon- 
light among  vast  ruins  and  are  at  once 
forgotten. 

Those  that  knew  where  the  battalion 
was  that  the  wandering  officer  looked  for 
were  not  many;    these  were  reserved  and 


IN  AN  OLD  DRAWING-ROOM    93 

each  spoke  like  one  that  has  a  murder  on  his 
conscience,  not  freely  and  openly :  for  of 
one  thing  no  one  speaks  in  France  and  that 
is  the  exact  position  of  a  unit.  One  may 
wave  one's  hand  vaguely  eastwards  and 
say  "Over  there",  but  to  name  a  village 
and  the  people  that  occupy  it  is  to  offend 
against  the  silence  that  in  these  days  broods 
over  France,  the  solemn  hush  befitting  so 
vast  a  tragedy. 

And  in  the  end  it  seemed  better  to  that 
officer  to  obey  the  R.  T.  O.  and  to  go  by 
his  train  to  Brie  that  left  in  the  morning; 
and,  that  question  settled,  there  remained 
only  food  and  sleep. 

Down  in  the  basement  of  the  big  house 
with  a  roof  there  was  a  kitchen,  in  fact 
there  was  everything  that  a  house  should 
have ;  and  the  more  that  one  saw  of  simple 
household  things,  tables,  chairs,  the  fire  in 
the  kitchen,  pieces  of  carpet,  floors,  ceilings 
and  even  windows,  the  more  one  wondered ; 
it  did  not  seem  natural  in  Peronne. 

Picture  to  yourself  a  fine  drawing-room 


94    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

with  high  ornamental  walls,  and  all  the  air 
about  it  of  dignity,  peace  and  ease,  that 
were  so  recently  gone;  only  just,  as  it 
might  have  been,  stepped  through  the 
double  doorway ;  skirts,  as  it  were  of  ladies 
only  just  trailed  out  of  sight;  and  then 
turn  in  fancy  to  that  great  town  streaming 
with  moonlight  and  full  of  the  mystery 
that  moonlight  always  brings,  but  without 
the  light  of  it;  all  black,  dark  as  caverns 
of  earth  where  no  light  ever  came,  blacker 
for  the  moonlight  than  if  no  moon  were 
there;  sombre,  mourning  and  accursed; 
each  house  in  the  great  streets  sheltering 
darkness  amongst  its  windowless  walls, 
as  though  it  nursed  disaster,  having  no 
other  children  left,  and  would  not  let  the 
moon  peer  in  on  its  grief  or  see  the  mon- 
strous orphan  that  it  fondled. 

In  the  old  drawing-room  with  twenty 
others  the  wandering  oflScer  lay  down  to 
sleep  on  the  floor,  and  thought  of  old  wars 
that  came  to  the  cities  of  France  a  long 
while  ago.     To  just  such  houses  as  this, 


IN  AN  OLD  DRAWING-ROOM    95 

he  thought,  men  must  have  come  before 
and  gone  on  next  day  to  fight  in  other 
centuries;  it  seemed  to  him  that  it  must 
have  been  more  romantic  then.  Who 
knows? 

He  had  a  bit  of  carpet  to  he  on.  A  few 
more  officers  came  in  in  the  early  part  of 
the  night,  and  talked  a  little,  and  lay  down. 
A  few  candles  were  stuck  on  tables  here  and 
there.  Midnight  would  have  struck  from 
the  towers  had  any  clock  been  left  to  strike 
in  Peronne.  Still  talk  went  on  in  low 
voices  here  and  there.  The  candles  burned 
low  and  were  fewer.  Big  shadows  floated 
along  those  old  high  walls.  Then  the  talk 
ceased  and  every  one  was  still:  nothing 
stirred  but  the  shadows.  An  officer  mut- 
tered in  sleep  of  things  far  thence  and  was 
silent.  Far  away  shells  thumped  faintly. 
The  shadows,  left  to  themselves,  went 
round  and  round  the  room,  searching  in 
every  corner  for  something  that  was  lost. 
Over  walls  and  ceiling  they  went  and  could 
not  find  it.     The  last  candle  was  failing. 


96    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS  . 

It  flared  and  guttered.  The  shadows  raced 
over  the  room  from  corner  to  corner.  Lost, 
and  they  could  not  find  it.  They  hurried 
desperately  in  those  last  few  moments. 
Great  shadows  searching  for  some  little 
thing.  In  the  smallest  nook  they  sought 
for  it.  Then  the  last  candle  died.  As  the 
flame  went  up  with  the  smoke  from  the 
fallen  wick  all  the  great  shadows  turned 
and  mournfully  trailed  away. 


THE  HOMES  OF  ARRAS 


XII 
THE  HOMES  OF  ARRAS 

AS  you  come  to  Arras  by  the  western 
road,  by  the  red  ramparts  and  the 
Spanish  gate.  Arras  looks  like  a  king. 
With  such  a  dignity  as  clings  to  the  ancient 
gateway  so  might  a  king  be  crowned; 
with  such  a  sweep  of  dull  red  as  the  old 
ramparts  show,  so  might  he  be  robed; 
but  a  dead  king  with  crowned  skull.  For 
the  ways  of  Arras  are  empty  but  for  brown 
soldiers,  and  her  houses  are  bare  as  bones. 

Arras  sleeps  profoundly,  roofless,  window- 
less,  carpetless ;  Arras  sleeps  as  a  skeleton 
sleeps,  with  all  the  dignity  of  former  days 
about  it,  but  the  life  that  stirs  in  its  streets 
is  not  the  old  city's  life,  the  old  city  is 
murdered. 

I  came  to  Arras  and  went  down  a  street, 


100    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

and  saw  back  gardens  glinting  through  the 
bare  ribs  of  the  houses.  Garden  after 
garden  shone,  so  far  as  it  could,  though  it 
was  in  October  and  after  four  years  of  war ; 
but  what  was  left  of  those  gardens  shining 
there  in  the  sun  was  like  sad  faces  trying 
to  smile  after  many  disasters. 

I  came  to  a  great  wall  that  no  shell  had 
breached.  A  cascade  of  scarlet  creeper 
poured  over  it  as  though  on  the  other  side 
some  serene  garden  grew,  where  no  dis- 
aster came,  tended  by  girls  who  had  never 
heard  of  war,  walking  untrodden  paths. 
It  was  not  so.  But  one's  fancy,  weary  of 
ruin,  readily  turns  to  such  scenes  wherever 
facts  are  hidden,  though  but  by  a  tottering 
wall,  led  by  a  few  bright  leaves  or  the 
glimpse  of  a  flower. 

But  not  for  any  fancy  of  mine  must  you 
picture  ruin  any  more  as  something  graced 
with  splendour,  or  as  it  were  an  argosy 
reaching  the  shores  of  our  day  laden  with 
grandeur  and  dignity  out  of  antiquity. 
Ruin  to-day  is  not  covered  with  ivy,  and 


THE  HOMES  OF  AREAS      10^ 

has  no  curious  architecture  or  strange 
secrets  of  history,  and  is  not  beautiful  or 
romantic  at  all.  It  has  no  tale  to  tell  of 
old  civilizations,  not  otherwise  known,  told 
of  by  few  grey  stones.  Ruin  to-day  is 
destruction  and  sorrow  and  debt  and  loss, 
come  down  untidily  upon  modern  homes 
and  cutting  off  ordinary  generations,  smash- 
ing the  implements  of  familiar  trades  and 
making  common  avocations  obsolete.  It 
is  no  longer  the  guardian  and  the  chronicle 
of  ages  that  we  should  otherwise  forget : 
ruin  to-day  is  an  age  heaped  up  in  rubble 
round  us  before  it  has  ceased  to  be  still 
green  in  our  memory.  Quite  ordinary 
wardrobes  in  unseemly  attitudes  gape  out 
from  bedrooms  whose  front  walls  are  gone, 
in  houses  whose  most  inner  design  shows 
unconcealed  to  the  cold  gaze  of  the  street. 
The  rooms  have  neither  mystery  nor  adorn- 
ment. Burst  mattresses  loll  down  from 
bedraggled  beds.  No  one  has  come  to 
tidy  them  up  for  years.  And  roofs  have 
slanted  down  as  low  as  the  first  floor. 


10^    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

I  saw  a  green  door  ajar  in  an  upper  room : 
the  whole  of  the  front  wall  of  the  house 
was  gone :  the  door  partly  opened  so  oddly 
on  to  a  little  staircase,  whose  steps  one  could 
just  see,  that  one  wondered  whither  it 
went.  The  door  seemed  to  beckon  and 
beckon  to  some  lost  room,  but  if  one  could 
ever  have  got  there,  up  through  that 
shattered  house,  and  if  the  steps  of  that 
little  staircase  would  bear,  so  that  one 
came  to  the  room  that  is  hidden  away  at 
the  top,  yet  there  could  only  be  silence  and 
spiders  there,  and  broken  plaster  and  the 
dust  of  calamity:  it  is  only  to  memories 
that  the  green  door  beckons;  nothing 
remains. 

And  some  day  they  may  come  to  Arras 
to  see  the  romance  of  war,  to  see  where  the 
shells  struck  and  to  pick  up  pieces  of  iron. 
It  is  not  this  that  is  romantic,  not  Mars 
but  poor,  limping  Peace.  It  is  what  is  left 
that  appeals  to  you,  with  pathos  and  in- 
finite charm,  little  desolate  gardens  that 
no  one  has  tended  for  years,  wall-paper  left 


THE  HOMES  OF  ARRAS      103 

in  forlorn  rooms  when  all  else  is  scattered, 
old  toys  buried  in  rubbish,  old  steps  un- 
trodden on  inaccessible  landings :  it  is 
what  is  left  that  appeals  to  you,  what 
remains  of  old  peaceful  things.  The  great 
guns  throb  on,  all  round  is  the  panoply  of 
war,  if  panoply  be  the  right  word  for  this 
vast  disaster  that  is  known  to  Arras  as 
innumerable  separate  sorrows,  but  it  is  not 
to  this  great  event  that  the  sympathy  turns 
in  Arras,  nor  to  its  thunder  and  show,  nor 
the  trappings  of  it,  guns,  lorries,  and  frag- 
ments of  shells :  it  is  to  the  voiceless,  de- 
serted inanimate  things,  so  greatly  wronged, 
that  all  the  heart  goes  out:  floors  fallen 
in  festoons,  windows  that  seem  to  be  wailing, 
roofs  as  though  crazed  with  grief  and  then 
petrified  in  their  craziness;  railings,  lamp- 
posts, sticks,  all  hit,  nothing  spared  by  that 
frenzied  iron:  the  very  earth  clawed  and 
torn :  it  is  what  is  left  that  appeals  to  you. 
As  I  went  from  Arras  I  passed  by  a  grey, 
gaunt  shape,  the  ghost  of  a  railway  station 
standing  in  the  wilderness  haunting  a  waste 


104    UNHAPPY  FAR-OFF  THINGS 

of  weeds,  and  mourning,  as  it  seemed,  over 
rusted  railway  lines  lying  idle  and  purpose- 
less as  though  leading  nowhere,  as  though 
all  roads  had  ceased,  and  all  lands  were 
deserted,  and  all  travellers  dead :  sorrowful 
and  lonely  that  ghostly  shape  stood  dumb 
in  the  desolation  among  houses  whose  doors 
were  shut  and  their  windows  broken.  And 
in  all  that  stricken  assembly  no  voice  spoke, 
but  the  sound  of  iron  tapping  on  broken 
things,  which  was  dumb  awhile  when  the 
wind  dropped.  The  wind  rose  and  it 
tapped  again. 


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